Highlights of ACSF in Asheville Middle School

 

 

2012-2013 Awards

 

Paul Perotta, Tina Robinson, Holly Sutter, Jo Gibbs, Stephanie Cyrus, Kathy Lane, Teah Hartman, and Kristen Doe of Asheville Middle, Asheville High and SILSA are Fellows on the Supporting Differentiated Instruction through Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) project. This team will conduct research on differentiated instruction and grading practices. Each of the secondary teachers will then select one classroom to use as a pilot for differentiated instruction. Through this project, these classroom teachers will determine which strategies from their research have positive impact in the classroom learning environment. Additionally, they will work to implement the effective strategies district-wide.

  • # of Students Impacted: All K-12 students
  • # of Teachers Impacted: All K-12 teachers
     

 

2011-2012 Awards

TAPAS Awards

Moira Bradford with artist Tamiko Ambrose Murray

Brian Arnolds with artist Ian Wilkinson

Sarah Dick with artist Ian Wilkinson

Amanda Swartzlander, Betsy Ray, Jesse Pitt, Jen Doherty, Jeff Dewhirst, Nick Rogowski & Nadeen Rolfe of Asheville Middle School will be Fellows with the support of their team leaders Melissa Hedt & Pam Cocke.  They will work on the project the Paideia Seminar Cycle to address Common Core Standards.  Through the Paideia Seminars students will study and analyze complex texts with their peers using active reading strategies during pre-seminar, discuss the text in a seminar led by a teacher facilitator who poses open-ended questions, and write in response to the seminar and ideas discussed during the post-seminar.  Seminars will include all four core academic areas; some texts will be used school-wide, and others will be specific to grade levels.  With this funding teachers will study the Common Core State Standards, identify the nexus of the standards within each core content area, and create new  seminars for each grade level and the school as a whole that apply the new standards. 
 

Mark Jankowski, Kevin Laws, John Moody, Terry Wright & Sara Monson of Asheville Middle School are Fellows on the Project Based Learning Research project.  This team will engage in professional development that integrates learning across subjects, and with the use of laptop computers, to increase achievement and engagement among struggling learners. Through this project students will work in teams to experience and explore relevant, real-world problems, questions, issues and challenges; then create presentation and products to share what they have learned.  The activities will be sustained for a two-year grant period through the embedded curriculum and activities that were developed and the expertise of the teacher leaders.  At the end of the two year grant they will have developed a cadre of teacher leaders and approximately 5 classroom teachers who will be able to offer their learned expertise to others at their grade level, in their building and across the district. 

 

Moira Bradford, of Asheville Middle School, has been awarded $2,900 for Writing for Literacy. This project, based on a proven model that exists in Texas and New York, will be an innovative teaching and learning experience in which students will enhance critical thinking skills and literacy. This project will bring a writer-in-residence into Moira's classroom throughout the year to support the students in this year-long process of writing and revising. This project will promote a diverse community of voices that will enhance the learning of all students in Moira's 8th grade classroom.
 
 Jo Peterson Gibbs, Judy Garrison and Hayley Holland, of Asheville Middle School, have been awarded $2,000 for Trout in the Classroom. This nationally recognized interdisciplinary program introduces cold water conservation education for students. Through this project students will raise brook trout, a native cold water species, from eggs to fingerlings over the course of the school year and integrate all subjects into the NC standard course of study through scientific exploration. This project aims to improve the core academic areas for all students through the innovative process of experiential learning. 
 

Ruben Orengo, of Asheville Middle School, has been awarded $1,500 for a Strings for Students grant. With this funding Ruben will purchase additional violins to expand students' access to the music program at Asheville Middle. These additional instruments will be especially beneficial to underserved students who have limited accessibility to instruments. This project will enhance the musical opportunities for the new sixth grade string students.

Betsy Ray, of Asheville Middle School, has been awarded $2,500 for her grant Girl Power. Through this grant Betsy will extend the experiences and global connections of girls within the scientific fields of energy. This project will focus on expanding students' understanding of energy, how we use it, how it transfers, how it is controlled and how the world's energy needs are interrelated across political boundaries. In the classroom this project will seek to extend students' understanding of themselves not only as local citizens but also as world citizens who share resources globally. An all-girls afterschool club will run from September to March to engage girls in developing self-confidence as problem solvers, create a sense of self as a junior scientist and build collaboration. 

 

 

2010 - 2011 Awards

 

A TAPAS grant was awarded to Harrison Davis for resident artist, Tamiko Ambrose Murray, with the Lessons on Personal Narrative project.  This project will teach students how to write about themselves and different techniques of the creative writing process.

Amanda Swartzlander was given a TAPAS grant for resident artist, Nina Ruffini, and a 20th Century Puppets project.  Students will be writing and performing original plays with topics from the 20th century.  A group of students will be allowed to use puppets in their skit. 

Two TAPAS grants were awarded to Moria Bradford.  One for resident artist, Ginger Heubner, for a Visualizing History project.  Students will be making colleges which reflect nineteenth century American Life.  Resident artist, Erinn Huntley, and the 20th Century America project, will be helping students write and preform a play detailing key events of the twentieth century. 

Jennifer Hartman was awarded an ACSF Micro-Grant to purchase books on the Holocaust in the single gender classes.  These books will help children learn about the atrocities of the Holocaust and part of a larger unit of language arts and social studies. 

Asheville Middle school was awarded an ACSF Micro-Grant for the Manga Literary Classic Book Series written by Harrison Davis.  These funds will provide graphic literature for those students who are intimidated by the written word alone.

An ACSF Micro-Grant was given to Eva Chazo for the Diary of an Asheville Middle School Writing Project.  This project will have student with disabilities create diaries of their lives in middle school including writing, layout and illustrating their work.

Asheville Middle School was awarded an ACSF Parsec Financial Math Literacy Grant for News2You Everyday Math written by Carly Smith.  This project will help students with learning disabilities use math with current events.

Asheville Middle School was awarded an ACSF Innovation Grant for FEAST (Fresh, Easy, Affordable, Sustainable and Tasty), a grant written by Sara Monson.  This project has had great success in its pilot year and will expand healthy cooking classes to accommodate more AMS students.  Sara was also awarded an an ACSF Reading, Riding, and Retrofit Green Team Grant, for a Compost Bin, to compost the food waste from FEAST and the FACS class.

Asheville Middle School was awarded a ACSF Innovation Grant for Single Gender Education Experience written by Mary Margaret Sullivan.  This program provides Gurian Institute training in brain-based single gender teaching strategies for all AMS teachers.

Asheville Middle School was awarded a Progress Energy E-Education Grant for Girls Science After-School written by Betsy Ray. This program will offer middle school girls the opportunity to participate in exciting, hands-on investigations, field trips and guest speakers in an after-school setting.

Stephanie Reagan, of Asheville Middle School, was awarded $6,000 to lead a team of teachers in incorporating hands-on tools created by Buckminster Fuller. Aboard Spaceship Earth uses the Dymaxion Map that "reveals our planet as one island in one ocean, without any visually obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents." At the heart of this work is assisting students to understand their role in protecting the spaceship we all share through integrated units that examine geography, science, social studies, math, technology and literacy.   The Team will then train other Asheville Middle teachers and focus will be given to inter-connected, hands-on experiences.

Jo Peterson Gibbs, of Asheville Middle School, was awarded $5,000 for Study of the School-wide Enrichment Model. This Fellow organized a team of educators to receive introductory training in the School-wide Enrichment Model for gifted education, discuss the potential for implementation in Asheville City Schools and pilot the program. The School-wide Enrichment Model allows gifted services to be focused on providing enrichment opportunities for all students and will be one of the focused practices of the new AIG plan in Asheville City Schools. As a result, this spring, all sixth grade students chose among a catalogue of stimulating and challenging opportunities ranging from chess to game creation during a special enrichment period.
 

2009 - 2010 Awards

Asheville Middle School is awarded an ACSF Innovation Grant for P.A.W.S (Pride, Attitude, Self-Worth, and Service to Others), a program proposal  written by Barbara Groome.  Teachers and students will be brought together for a day of experiential team building at Lutheridge in Arden, including outdoor challenge courses and group initiatives to introduce positive behavior support to AMS.

Asheville Middle School is awarded an ACSF Innovation Grant for Growing with the Greens: Educational Garden, a project written by Kristalyn Bunyan, James Rogers and Patti Griffin.  The program will teach exceptional students lessons via garden education, and harvested plants will be used in fund-raisers.

Asheville Middle School is awarded an ACSF Fellows Grant for Engaging Non Fiction, a proposal written by Melissa Hedt and Amy Sheeler.  The program focuses on increasing student competence with non-fiction texts across the curriculum through purchasing high-interest non-fiction reading materials and additional work with the teachers and literacy coach.